ediaries who act as brokers or dealers. The characteristics of these middlemen, the services they perform, and their relationship to other parts of the financial vary widely from country to country. In many countries there is no single meeting place where the middlemen get together, yet in most countries the contacts among all participants are sufficiently open and free to assure each supplier or user of funds that he will get or pay a price that fairly reflects all of the influences (including his own) that are currently affecting the whole supply and the whole demand. In nearly all cases, moreover, the unifying force of competition is reflected at any given moment in a common price (that is, rate of interest) for similar transactions. Continuous fluctuations in the money market rates of interest result from changes in the pressure of available supplies of funds upon the market and in the pull of current demands upon the market.

 

26. The first paragraph is mainly about .

A. the definition of money market

B. the constitution of a money market

C. the basic functions of a money market

D. the general feature of a money market

27. According to this passage, the money market .

A. provides convenient services to its customers

B. has close contact with the individuals or firms seeking funds

C. maintains accounts with various retailers of financial services

D. is made up of institutions who specialize in handling wholesale monetary transactions

28. Which of the following statements concerning money market is not true according to this passage?

A. Money market does not exist in planned economies.

B. Money market has been established in some socialist countries.

C. Money market encourages open competition among bulk suppliers of funds.

D. Money market relies upon market processes to distribute funds to final users.

29. The author uses the example of middleman to show .

A. market transactions are important in different countries

B. dealers are needed in doing business

C. middlemen can play great role in different transactions and different countries.

D. middlemen in different countries have different actions in business.

30. According to this passage, .

A. brokers usually perform the same kinds of services to their customers

B. brokers have little contact with each other

C. open competition tends to result in a common price for similar transactions at any given moment

D. changes in the pressure of available supplies of funds upon market tends to maintain a common price for similar transactions

 

Text 3

Environmental issues raise a host of difficult ethical questions, including the ancient one of the nature of intrinsic value. Whereas many philosophers in the past have agreed that human experiences have intrinsic value and the utilitarians at least have always accepted that the pleasures and pains of nonhuman animals are of some intrinsic significance, this does not show why it is so bad if dodos become extinct or a rain forest is cut down. Are these things to be regretted only because of the loss to humans or other sentient creatures? Or is there more to it than that? Some philosophers are now prepared to defend the view that trees, rivers, species (considered apart from the individual animals of which they consist), and perhaps ecological systems as a whole have a value independent of the instrumental value they may have for humans or other sentient creatures.

Our concern for the environment also raises the question of our obligations to future generations. How much do we owe to the future? From a social contract view of ethics or for the ethical egoist, the answer would seem to be: nothing. For we can benefit them, but they are unable to reciprocate. Most other ethical theories, however, do give weight to the interests of coming generations. Utilitarians, for one, would not think that the fact that members of future generations do not exist yet is any reason for giving less consideration to their interests than we give to our own, provided only that we are certain that they will exist and will have interests that will be affected by what we do. In the case of, say, the storage of radioactive wastes, it seems clear that what we do will indeed affect the interests of generations to come.

The question becomes much more complex, however, when we consider that we can affect the size of future generations by the population policies we choose and the extent to which we encourage large or small families. Most environmentalists believe that the world is already dangerously overcrowded. This may well be so, but the notion of overpopulation conceals a philosophical issue that is ingeniously explored by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons (1984). What is optimum population? Is it that population size at which the average level of welfare will be as high as possible? Or is it the size at which the total amount of welfare—the average multiplied by the number of people—is as great as possi